Gee, that couldn't be more simple. By doing so, I wouldn't have to hit the 990's kill switch, nor worry about the three remaining inputs; isn't that so?

This seems to be the best solution, so far!

Thanks, Altec!

John

Umm, yeah - what he said. (No comment as to why it took the rest of us this long to skip to the underlying solution...) That definitely seems like the cleanest approach in a lot of ways. Unbalanced from the 990 to the A5 for center and surrounds, then unbalanced left/right from both 990 and ZD to a switch box ahead of the A5 (or just manually switch cables around, although I'd personally prefer to track down a good quality switch box).

A good quality switch box would be the most practical, although I've yet to find one. The problem is how to gauge its quality. Switching cables would eliminate potential signal degradation.

No problem, Gonk. This has all been terribly confusing to me, but, on the other hand, I've learned a great deal (a good thing). I did not know that balanced means a double signal conversion and had I known that, would never had gone that route.

Thanks,

John

The beauty of a passive switchbox is that there is no real "quality" issue beyond the simple robustness of the connectors and switch elements. Basically a mechanical switch is a mechanical switch, is a mechanical switch. As long as the switch makes a connection (they all do), then there is no possibility of degredation of the signal in any way.

Heck, even RadioShack sells passive swtich boxes for under $20. These have video connections in addition to the audio ones, but these can simply be unused. There are other switch boxes out there I'm sure, but the operative word is PASSIVE. No electronics between the input and output - just a mechanical swtich.